Background: I used LaTeX around 18 years ago to write my Master's Thesis, and not since then except one project a long time ago. I wasn't sure whether my question should be posted here, or in XeTeX since I need to use .otf fonts, but the question is mainly about formatting...

I would like to figure out how to significantly alter all the Section, Subsection, Subsubsection and Paragraph titles, as well as the actual paragraph text which is under each title. I want it to look like the following pdf:

So the short question is: how can I use xelatex to generate something very similar to that pdf?

I imagine the .tex would look something like the following, but then I would redefine \section, \subsection, \subsubsection, \paragraph and add new attributes for sectiontext, subsectiontext, subsubsectiontext, paragraphtext. For each of these 8 parts of the document, I would like to be able to change: font, font size, bold, italic, underline, margins left, right, before, and after, and indent.

I tried redefining section, et al using \renewcommand and changing the font, italics, bold, etc. in the new commands. But I couldn't even get it to change the font or italics, much less all the spacing around the titles, etc.

Sorry for the long question. I have been working piece by piece trying to figure everything out, but I've been at it for a couple days and feel like I haven't gotten anywhere, so I thought if someone can point me in the right direction, maybe I'm going about it all wrong. Thanks!